An actor, a novelist and a librarian share their views, their favourite heroines, and improvise their own tales of women with great hair fleeing gothic houses. Rebecca is joined by Karen Healey and Moata Tamaira(librarian from our very own Christchurch City Libraries), in a session chaired by Rachael King.

Rebecca Vaughan. Photo by Ben Guest. Image supplied.

What are you looking forward to doing in Christchurch?

It’s my first time in Christchurch, so I’m really looking forward to having a good explore of the whole city! I absolutely love just wandering the streets of a new city, and seeing where my instincts take me. I also imagine I’ll take a visit to the Art Gallery (one of my passions!)

What do you think about libraries?

Libraries are a hugely important, and often underestimated part of forward thinking culture. To allow free access to so much information: literature, history, reference books, geography, children’s literature, the list is endless, is vital to towns and cities.

And although we have so much information at our fingertips via the internet – libraries are places where communities can meet: storytelling for children, and reading groups for adults, just for starters! An invaluable resource.

What would be your “desert island book”?

Gosh – that’s hard! For fiction – it would probably be Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body – although I’d also love an unending supply of historical biographies – probably by Alison Weir!

Share a surprising fact about yourself.

To the surprise even of myself, I became a vegan two years ago. I thought I would miss cheese so much it would be impossible, but it’s amazed me how much of it was habit, and now I don’t miss it at all! (Oh and I also performed for the Netherland’s Royal Family!)

Following a performance of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography with Rebecca Vaughan, sit back and enjoy dark tales of Gothic houses, damaged men, plucky heroines and secrets lurking in attics. What is the enduring appeal of the Gothic women of literature? Who are the forgotten women, and the doppelgangers? An actor, a novelist and a librarian share their views, their favourite heroines, and improvise their own tales of women with great hair fleeing Gothic houses. Rebecca is joined by Karen Healey and Moata Tamaira, chaired by Rachael King.

Fight like a girl kicks off with an author’s note “I hope you enjoy it, and find it galvanising!” Well, this book is absolutely galvanising — and upsetting, eye-opening, rage-inducing. It comes down to this: Girls, women, trans women — it’s ok to be angry, in fact if you’re not, you should be:

If you are a woman living in this world and you’re not angry, you’re not paying enough attention. Not to your own life, not to the lives of other women and not to the lives of the women who’ll come after you. (p 281)

Clementine Ford. Image supplied.

Next month you can hear Clementine in person at a WORD Christchurch Shifting Points of View event, part of the Christchurch Arts Festival.

Join Australia’s online sensation, fearless feminist heroine and scourge of trolls and misogynists everywhere Clementine Ford as she outlines her essential manifesto for feminists new, old and soon-to-be, and exposes just how unequal the world continues to be for women. Introduced by journalist Beck Eleven.Find out more and book your tickets.(one session has already sold out, soz)

Talk of feminism is always timely. Just look what our politicians Meritia Turei and Jacinda Ardern have been dealing with.

Fight like a girl has enough personal backstory to make you understand the things that set Clementine on the path to righteous feminism, particularly in the area of reproductive rights and mental health. She also sets it straight about the online abuse she’s suffered for ten years.

But where I think this book comes out strongest is in its observations:

Why do some women come out against feminism (we’ve seen several high profile NZ examples of this)

… it all comes back to the same thing – women capitulating to the system in order to be given some notion of power within it. (p. 145)

What is privilege?

If you’re not forcing yourself to routinely interrogate the benefits you enjoy in society, it’s all too easy to tell yourself that other people are inventing their disadvantages. (p. 148)

Why do some women hate men? Because they have compelling reasons to.

Instead of berating feminists for being misandrists, perhaps these men should start taking responsibility for the abominable, destructive and dehumanising treatment of women throughout all of history up to and including the present day. (p.159)

Clementine relates examples of rape culture: Brock Turner, Stephen Milne, the Four corners case, and more. The effect of the cumulative examples is to make you want to change EVERYTHING.